She ordered coffee, set herself in a corner booth, and started drawing.

This was three hours ago.

It's getting late now, but it's the weekend, and it's not like her parents care if she's out late. As long as she's not dead, everything's fine.

Which is fine by her. Who needs parents, anyway?

As usual, her garb is plainest of plain, bulky green coat and jeans and nothing fancy. No makeup, no earrings, nothing. She's too busy for frippery.

She's practicing people-drawing. Waitresses and customers, grubby children and grizzled elders.

Whoever, whatever, she'll draw it.

Dressed in a faded, gray shirt and faded, blue jeans, Danny's found slouched over his laptop and sleeping with his eyes opened.

It wasn't an abnormal pose to see Danny in. The white screen cast white across his sallow-paper skin, drawing shadows from his angular face and hollowing out his hazel eyes. He has no idea how long he's been there, and he honestly doesn't care. All that's pertinent, at this moment, is the Idea. Or, more accurately, finding the Idea.

He sighs (again) and rubs at the blue crow's leg branching from his left temple. What he'd give to have one of those muses -- mythical, theoretical, or no. It'd make his life a hell of a lot easier if he could blame things on something else.

Montrez found a job and it's about bloody time, because his finances were getting thin. He was decked out in pretty standard waitering garb, a white button down shirt and an apron, with pockets and pens and straws and things like that. His hair was even tied back, probably because his boss was clear about "being presentable" and stuff like that. So it was half up, half down, but out of his face. Dreadlocks look kinda cool like that, anyway.

Two coffees and a piece of pie were balanced on his tray that, for some reason other than the strong arm holding it up, was perfectly balanced. Aah, the advantages of being a telekinetic.

He had an interesting face and skin tone, if anyone was keen on looking. They came from parents of different origins, the father being a mix of lots of white people, and the mother being a black supermodel in England.

He wasn't sure that he liked being a waiter, though.

One a study in shadows, the other a study in color.

Such decisions.

Decisions, decisions....

So she plops herself into a seat conviniently just behind Danny, and proceeds to read over his shoulder.

Since she can't draw them both, she's just going to see what this one's so fascinated by.

Danny's thinking how usual it is for him to be thinking. Or is it called daydreaming? But most daydreams are conscious things -- pithy, makeshift things controlled by the mind at the mind's whim.

He's thinking about his body lying supine in the ditch and his face lying face-down into dank, black earth; the neck's swollen at that angle and the skin's bruised with fingerprints of blues and purples.

He's also thinking on what the fuck is reading over his shoulder again.

Peeved, he opts for a silence that's eloquently saying:

Piss off.

Montrez goes about his waitering duties, taking orders and giving them to people. Walking around, being seen until someone wants him. He thinks about filling up that lady's coffee...but things look a little tense, so halfway there he doubles back.

"Whatcha doing?"

She is not one to be put off by, well, anything.

Stubborn lassie.

He flinches at his bad luck. Which, since it's a common thing, is nothing out of the norm.

"Typing," he says, curt and clipped. And to support it, the text, I hate nosy bitches so leave me alone is tapped on the keyboard.

He raises a hand to palm at his right eye before blinking back onto the screen.

"I can see that. What are you typing?" Pause. "Sides from insults, anyway. You should watch your language, 's rude."

She doesn't like swearing. At all. Ever.

Abrupt change of subject time!

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

Yes, we all know he's too old for her. It's just her way. Please don't take it personally, hm?

((Ee, have no idea how to involve Montrez. *flail*))

Danny's hand spasms as he chokes -- a remarkable feat, considering the fact that he wasn't drinking anything.

';aslkjfd' says the computer screen.

"What?" he says, sputtering still. He twists his head to look at what lunatic's talking to him, and adds a visual to the mental list of profane words he's seeting out.

A cheerfully brown girl with freckles and sparkling eyes and a shameless interest in every detail of your existence ever. A girl, not a woman, fresh-faced fifteen. Looks fourteen, maybe thirteen. Young.

"Do. You. Have. A girlfriend."

It isn't that hard to understand, is it?

Swallow is being extra patient.

The condescending nails him in the head and if there's any excuse for Danny to look flushed, it's this time, right now.

Too bad Danny's as pale as a cow's hip bone and just as constant.

Livid, he answers with a "No," while typing in "You can't read, can you?". It's childish, yes, but this girl's childish so why can't he be childish, as well? Encouraging the Golden Rule and all-of-that.

But her blatantness is fast coming on as less annoying and more suspicious, and he turns his head and body to look at her fully while agonizing over the abuse of his stiff, aching limbs.

Danny's only thirty-three and yet he feels like he's hitting fifty.

Fuuck.

She sticks her tongue out at him, and comments, "Why not? Did you call all the girls your age nosey as well?"

She is unsurprised that he doesn't have a girlfriend.

He doesn't deserve a girlfriend.

Haha.

Anyway, she has an excuse to be childish: She's a child. She is a child in all senses of the word (because we don't live in the medieval ages here, doncha know).

Correction: He isn't willing to have a girlfriend. They provide too much physical contact for Danny (which is anything above the level of a handshake); they're too needy to be a proper pet (Danny has a goldfish) and they're incessant and whiny and demand things like Malls and Committment.

For the record, Danny's not a chauvenist. He's unbiased to whoever and whatever he hates.

"No," he says, hazel eyes looking her up and down. From any passerby, Danny would look like a sleazy pedophile checking out a girl, but his face's too critical for that and it's fixed in a grimace's mold.

He pauses as memories of old girlfriends fall on him like anvils.

"They're all the same."

They being females. They indicating that they belong in the category of what-must-not-be-named.

"I bet they dumped you."

Swallow is a smug child, can you tell?

It really is amazing how quick she is to judge, don't you think?

His voice is acid before he even speaks.

"No," he spits out. And he's short of saying the defensive I dumped them, but instead, goes for the "It's none of your business and why the hell do you care, anyway?"

She's making him uneasy just by being there. He transfers his laptop to his lap (apt, wouldn't you agree?), closes the unsaved document, and pretends to look busy by going online.

He ends up tallying everything she wears. Bulky green coat? Looks Grinch-ish to him, and that's enough to be bad. Keep in mind that Danny has no sense of fashion whatsoever (see above) and is more fixated on life's crude symbols of foreshadowing.

Not to mention the fact that Bulky, green coats makes things easier to hide daggers, guns, and palm-sized weapons of mass destruction.

Or wings.

She also hides wings.

"I don't. No one cares about you," she says with a grin, as if this is the most amazing and delightful thing in the world.

"Would you like a feather?"

She's molting.

Interestingly enough, Danny's not hurt by the remark. He might have a smidgen of surprise that she had the gall to say it outright, but the insult's uncreative and lackluster and he frankly doesn't give a damn.

One click and the screen's filled with black and purple and at least one, Netflix Delivers DVD Rentals! ad. Danny squints at the already dimmed screen, peering down at the white text.

And, fuck, who the hell is [.pyrotechnist.]? Some aspiring meglomaniac pyro-wannabe, most likely.

"Whatcha doing?"

It wasn't an insult. It just seemed (highly) likely.

And then she is bored.

And then she wants more coffee.

And then she puts a feather in his hair, right behind his ear.

Heh heh heh.

Feather.

Danny has a nickname for her because he's beneath asking her for her name. And it's Chicken Girl.

"It's none," he repeats, slowly for her account and his. "Of your business."

He eyes her from the side, wondering where she got the feathers and are they assassin instruments cleverly hidden behind a soft, fluffy exterior? Poison?

Danny reminds himself not to touch his drink.

Said-drink which had been abandoned for a good two hours ago had already succumbed to its fate, half-congealed.

The feathers, dark brown and black, could quite easily be chicken feathers.

They're a bit longer and narrower, however. More like a pheasant.

Very like a pheasant, actually.

"I suppose you're right. You aren't very interesting, you know."

She had such high hopes for him, her tone says.

Danny inwardly relieves himself with a grateful sigh.

"And you're fucking Sesame Street," he replies, typing viciously at nothing.

Maybe it's the impudent attitude; maybe (and mainly) it's her coat; or maybe it's the goddamn chicken-feathers -- Danny doesn't care for the details; it's the the overall picture of abnormality that's bothering him and the underlayer of Something Not Right.

He glances back at her, furtive and discreet. She's hiding something, that's for sure, and it isn't the curiosity that's twitching his hands and making him want to pull her coat out of the way -- it's paranoia.

Whoever said that curiosity kills the cat needs to get shot.

"And you're prehistoric, so it all works out."

Old-old-mc-old-guy!

His new nickname.

"Anyway, Oldy McOld, Big Bird wouldn't fit me."

She only has wings.

Also she is brown.

She shrugs her shoulders, then shrugs her wings.

It looks, well, weird.

Inhuman.

Oops?

Danny starts at the nickname and whirls to glare at her, catching the outline of her shoulders and the fact that they didn't move, although something did. And that something's behind The Coat.

The words Oh my fucking God are stamped on his face since his voice fails him.

Calmly, as calmly as possible, he closes his laptop, gets to his feet, and speed-walks towards the door.

Don't ask questions -- just fucking run.

Chances are, he'll never, ever have to see her again.

But the image of chicken feathers and Grinch-colored coats still linger in his eyes and he's palming at them, right tic in full swing and shivers waging war against finger coordination.

She rolls her eyes and turns her attention to the remains of her coffee, which is without a doubt cold and dead.

And looks around for a waiter.

Coffee? Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?